First Love

Announcer: Welcome to First Love with Dr. Robin Cassis and Dr. Nathan Cassis, where faith meets real life. In this weekly broadcast, you'll discover practical and spiritual keys to reclaim God's story in your life, deep in your relationship with Jesus, and encounter him as your first love, whether for the first time or all over again. No topic is off limits as we make Jesus real, relevant, and relational. Stay with us. Your journey back to first love starts now.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Hello everybody and welcome to First Love on this beautiful Wednesday. My name is Dr. Nathan Cassis, and I have with me Dr. Robin Cassis.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Hi. Yes, I'm back here again.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And we are talking about the valley of tears, the valley of Bekaa.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's quite a heavy subject.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It is, and we're trying to keep it as light as we can cuz we know that as we bring these things up, God will be revisiting certain things in your life that only you and him know about. And that's okay. Don't fear it. Don't, you know, push it away or push it down. Go through the valley as Dr. Robin wonderfully keeps reminding us. So Dr. Robin, what would you like to say as we begin?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Well, it's a a very challenging subject. It really is, and I'm understanding it more as we enter in to even the 23rd Psalm as I I start to see how this is not just a very quick journey through there. It's very detailed and different portions of it, uh, different experiences that we're having in life.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And, uh, if people would just grab a hold of that, I think they would understand the spirit of God a lot quicker.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Wow, so true.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Instead of just thinking it's automatic, you know, the steps that once we step into one thing, we just step out of that one and then step into the the other.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: It just shows you how deep those steps are.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah. So a a really important thing, you know, when we talk about crying, I like to start this off with the baseline, right? Tears also communicate another thing. They don't just communicate joy and pain or processing. They also communicate a need for connection. And how do we see this play out? When when a baby is born, right? It learns connection through tears.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, it does.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Because all it can do is cry.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's their only form of voice.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It's their it's their it's their communication pipeline, right? And so because the baby cries and then mother comes and responds to the baby, the baby learns, ah, okay, crying tears are associated with safety.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, and that's the sad part about it here. If we go any further, there are some people that have not had that experience.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Absolutely.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And so they're still trying to get the communication of safety.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And that's what I want to help that person that is listening and going, well, I don't like crying, you know, and I don't know why I don't like crying. Well, this is probably a root area. Because you haven't learned to build that connection between safety and tears, you have convinced yourself, gone through life saying I don't need it. And that's actually something that really really costs later on according to biology. So remember, tears are for connection. They're also for attachment, okay? So attachment changes what our tears do. So from the earliest years of life, crying functions as the attachment signal.

The infant cries and ideally experiences distress, which leads to the caregiver responding, the parent, which leads to safety and brings regulation. So over thousands of repetitions, our nervous system learns when I'm distressed and I cry, I'm not alone. Healthy attachment gradually allows that external regulation to become internal regulation. So Bekaa is not just the valley where I cry, okay? It goes deeper than this. It is the valley where I discover whether I believe somebody will meet me there when I cry.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Mm.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And this is probably even with the Lord. Sometimes we don't believe that the Lord will meet us in the place of our tears.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And that's what I was saying, yes.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And because we haven't had the, uh, you know, the experience it's through a a natural sense, it's very hard because, uh, each role in our life is always representing God in some way.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah. Absolutely.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And a parent if the parent has been missing or has not done that which God requires them to do, that side of that role in that child's life is very much missing.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And it has much pain attached to it.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Absolutely.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: You know, and, um, you know, that pain can cause us to isolate, to hide, to withdraw, to blame.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yep.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: To get angry.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yep. Tears. They are not connecting

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Mm.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: because of that lack of a role being played in that person's life.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And then Dr. Robin, if we don't connect those tears through the years, each year has to connect with some tears. I'm going to keep saying that to drive it in. These are the little statements that I like to bring up.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So there needs to be tears for healthiness.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Absolutely. If we don't connect those tears through the years, something takes place. It is emotional suppression, and I want to just remind everybody as a holistic practitioner, somebody getting a doctorate of functional medicine, I'm being reminded every day by the Holy Spirit of the importance of the homeostasis in our body, both mind, body, soul, and spirit, all being in one harmonious connection. So it's not enough to change my diet and not cry. It's not enough to exercise and not cry because one piece of the puzzle is only being fixed. Here's the key. When you don't cry, what you've just said, I like to say it has a biological cost.

And what does that mean? Well, I'm going to read this statement. Consistently suppressing emotional expression can require significant cognitive and physiological effort. However, the goal is not uncontrolled emotional discharge, okay? Like self-pity, but healthy processing and regulation. So when you stop allowing your emotions to be healthily expressed, you will by default turn to emotional suppress, okay? And when you suppress those tears and you don't let them come forward like God created them to come forward, then the body begins looking for closure, and it begins, here's the key, holding you accountable for not giving it closure because it recognizes that you've suppressed that mechanism.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So that that also helps me to understand because, uh, the tears, you know, the windows of your soul are through those very areas, the the eyes that need to shed the tears to clean away what you're seeing.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Absolutely. And so modern iridology shows us that there are seven zones connected in the iris that all correlate and correspond to the seven main organ systems or the nine main organ systems, right, of the body. So when we don't allow those tears to produce the response of emotional release, not relief but release, we actually hold our body at ransom. And we have to pay. It's hard to say this, but you end up paying a biological cost later on in life. And the body will begin to turn on you. And this is the start that may help somebody where a lot of autoimmune disease begins.

It's where the body is turning on you because it's holding you accountable and

Dr. Nathan Kassas: For not crying.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: For not crying, for not processing, for not loving yourself in a godly way, for not allowing yourself to be broken and always putting yourself back together. These are the roots in the spiritual root composition. This is my specialty. This is the root. Your body, your cells are saying, well, you didn't give me the closure. So you you wanted to internally kill us because that's literally what you're doing. When you don't provide the closure to your body, you're saying, okay, I 'm taking that away from your body. So the body becomes what we call cell deviant.

So it turns on itself.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So when the Lord says it's there are times to cry, there's a time to cry. There's a time to grieve. There's a time to laugh.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: But there's a time to cry.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And he is like put the instructions out there. The timing is his, but there is a time when he requires the tears.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes. And so biblical strength is not an absence of tears. It's tears that integrate into what God is doing in my life.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes, they go along with the seasons and the timing and the exposure of what God is saying through the Holy Spirit, bringing it.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And this is why the enemy wants to rob us with wrong type of tears because those self-pity tears, those tears that think about us, they are not integrating the emotional processing of what God is doing. They're not bringing new insight, right? They're not giving us a new window into hope. They're just keeping us in that ruminating loop and swamp. So this is important, okay? Tears hold the years, but throughout the years, if you haven't cried the tears, there is a cost.

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Dr. Nathan Kassas: The one who loved you first is still loving you best.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I think that I'd like to ask a question straight out before we go any further, and that is you brought up how dangerous it is not to cry the right tears.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: What about men? Cuz men don't find it easy to cry.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Until things are so desperate, then they find themselves crying. You you're virtually saying this is a danger to your body.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah. It ties in with men the same way. Unfortunately, the stigma is that men don't cry, and that's kind of a stigma that's come through social constructs.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Well, then why don't we tell them tonight, men begin to allow the Lord to cause you to cry?

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah. Well, remember David, who's the man of man's, the greatest king probably ever, you know, to be in biblical history, was a man who wept. He wept in the presence of the Lord.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's what we need to talk about. Who else wept?

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Also Jeremiah, the weeping prophet, right?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And there were others.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yep. Laments throughout the minor prophets and the major prophets.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Laments.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah. Absolutely. Lamentations is a full book, literally, of weeping over the state of Israel's spiritual condition.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: So we can, um, eliminate tonight this belief that you must be strong. Yes, as I said before, we need to eliminate this with an an an what are we eliminating? That you're strong, you don't need to cry.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Why are you comparing strength to tears?

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Uh, Jesus wept.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Absolutely.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Jesus wept, and I'll say it again. And he was very strong.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah. Totally make never weak. And this is an important thing. One of the most important scriptures, we've said it before in the New Testament, is Jesus wept, two lines. But it showed the actual connection that he had to Lazarus, his friend. When Lazarus, he knew that Lazarus was going to be held back and that this was for a divine purpose, but he still had to go through the human emotion of connecting with the grief. He grieved over his friend Lazarus.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's right.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: He didn't let the father's reasoning stop him from crying, and men do that. We let the the godly reasoning, the Christianese answer, well, God's working all things for his good. Yes, but again, I want to tie it into Psalm 84:6. Until you go through the valley of tears, you don't find the strength. See, the tears turn into a spring. The spring becomes the strength for the season that you're in. So we try to go for the strength without the spring and the strength without the tears.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And I think we think sometimes men think that if they do cry, they're not being strong.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Mm.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: But that's the absolute opposite. Absolutely. And again, tying into the psychology of it, if a if a man, well, let's put it into, you know, the terms that it will apply in, if a boy as he is growing up from that age of about 5 to 12 in that prepubescent, right? So from 0 to 5, we find that boys are very very emotional, right? Because their neural systems are still developing, their emotional processing, everything's still developing, right? But then from about 10 onwards, some more testosterone tends to kick in. So you got to understand what testosterone does, okay?

So when a baby boy is born, okay, they actually have more connections between their left and right brain. So a woman can feel a lot more things because her left and right brain are continually connected. Now when you go through a woman's cycle and that change that comes in through puberty, there's a lot that goes on and it's evident. And we we always focus on what happens to the woman, and that 's not a problem at all. But there's actually a cycle change that happens within a man. Okay? So the when the boy goes through puberty at that 12 13 year old age, his body is going through so much change, but his brain is changing rapidly.

It's getting doused and it's getting literally soaked in testosterone. So what that does, here comes a really big important key that I'm getting to. What that does, that testosterone, it severs the corpus callosum in the brain. And the corpus callosum is what integrates left brain and right brain. So this is where a lot of men as they're forming into their identity and, you know, being a teenager, they lose the ability to connect, right, with their feelings. And now they begin to be more left brain oriented, which is rationality, right, uh, predictability. If it doesn't fit into my thinking, it doesn't work.

So here's the key. For that man to go through healthy emotional processing, and I'm talking a lot, but I'm going to get somewhere, in those years of around 10 to 15, he has to connect with a right male role model. That male role model has to teach him how to feel and emote healthily. If he doesn't connect in those years because he's forming who he will be as a man for the rest of his life, then he will determine for the rest of his life emotions are not necessary.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Wow.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I know I threw a lot, but this is important.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: No, I think it's very important.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: People don't understand.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: We need to hear this because this is so important. This is the way God created it to be.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yeah. And this is what Jesus was getting from his father, right? And this is what I do as a father. My son Levi is 10 years old, so he's coming into that window. If Levi sees me create space for his emotions in a healthy way and I don't downplay his tears and I don't downplay sensitivity and I allow the integration of what God has already joined together. Remember, what God has joined together, let no man separate. That also includes the hemispheres of the brain.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: God joined them together, but sin separated them, okay? So if I allow Levi to operate in that, then he will grow up going through his years of adolescence into adulthood, understanding tears are not weakness. My dad, who is my role model, who's very strong, he's a man of tears. He's a man of emotion. He's a man of empathy, compassion.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I've seen him break now. He was not always like that. He, uh, he couldn't cry, but I think that as he has got closer to the Lord, uh, tears now are like a spring in me.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes. And so Dr. Robin, to your point, with men, the lack of tears is tied to the lack of fathering.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It sure is.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And if you want to know as a man why you don't cry, it's because you never saw your father cry.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Possibly that is the reason, but that's not a reason for you not to experience the tears of that valley.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And that's the reason that God wants you to see he always intended for your father to show you what it was to cry. But maybe you had an absent father. Maybe your father walked out. Maybe your father was there but absent in, you know, spirit, but, you know, present in body, wasn't interested. So you've gone through life with a condition complex.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And you never had that role fulfilled.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Absolutely. So again, just understand with a man, that's what happens during puberty. There's a lot going on. So it's important for that man to attach to a healthy male role model that can mirror the emotion of God and and not say that emotion equals weakness or emotion equals neurotic is what we get called when we're men and we cry. Neurotic, up and down.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And I think just a little statement here, so I'd like to repeat this. I want men to realize the tears become a spring, pain becomes wisdom, grief becomes compassion, abandonment becomes sensitivity, loss becomes ministry, wounds become testimonies.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Not because the suffering itself was good,

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Say it.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: but because suffering was not given the final word.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That's it.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's true. See? The years where you didn't have the father, that's the suffering. But are you going to give those years the final word or are you going to let your years get those tears?

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And if you remember, tears become that spring. You see? And you're not meant to stay there, but you are meant to pass through there.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: So there's a key statement here that I want you to read, Dr. Robin, cuz it requires your maturity. I'm not there yet. It says maturity is when let's read that cuz I think that people really need to hear that. Maturity is when the place that drained you becomes a place from which something begins to flow.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It begins to flow.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: There we go. I read it, but I'm reading it for you cuz you couldn't find it.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And I couldn't find it, but there I've got to let you know, maturity is when you let the tears become your spring of water.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Cuz the key is God can't send the rain.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: No, he can't.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Until you dig for the spring.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And you as a human need to participate in this one.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's an important thing because you're asking for provision, provision of healing, provision of change, provision of breakthrough.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And progress. You see? You're asking for this for your walk. You're asking for it. God will strengthen you through tears.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: So provision requires participation.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So you dig the well, and God will send the rain.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Oh. You process and God will replenish.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes, and you will get healed as you participate. He'll prevent pro provide the provision.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Wow. So that brings us to the key idea that there are waters that you can dig or you can allow to flow from within.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Uncover even.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: But there are only certain waters that heaven can send.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It's that's it cuz God sends the rain.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Let's go back to Psalm 84 and let's read that process. Blessed is the man whose strength is in you. Funny how he says blessed is the man. I just want to point that out. Blessed is the man whose strength is in you, not strong as in, you know, macho alpha male. My strength is in the Lord. Jesus defines what strength is as manhood, whose heart is set on pilgrimage.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: As they pass through the valley of tears, they make it a spring. They make it a spring, not God. They

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Because God sends the rain.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And then the final line, the rain also covers it with pools.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Hallelujah.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: They go from strength to strength.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And this is so important for someone listening, Dr. Robin. They have not been given the permission by themselves. Let's forget about others by themselves to let the tears flow.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And God strengthens through tears.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: My Lord, I'm going to go have a good cry after this. But it doesn't work like that. See? We can say, oh, I'm going to have a good cry after this. No, it doesn't work like that because it has to be in season.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And it's got to be a leading from the spirit and you just operating with the spirit to see this being released when you least expect it.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Wow.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Can just be released.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yeah.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And this is another way you could have trauma healed.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yep.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: We think of how we're going to have trauma healed. We don't determine how God heals trauma.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Absolutely. And then

Dr. Nathan Kassas: He's the healer.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yeah. Sorry to cut you off there.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That's okay.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: In the next episode, we're going to dive into the makeup of tears scientifically and why that is so important for trauma release and what that involves.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That'd be great.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: But Dr. Robin, there's a key statement I'm going to say here and I'm going to throw it to you for your final words. Okay? The tear always says this hurts, but the spring says this will not be wasted. That's how we turn it into a spring. Over to you for your final words.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I've got to say it again, repeat it. You dig the well, God will send the rain.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Wow.

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